Review Agar.io

I’ve written about Agar.io for Android elsewhere because I’ve played the crap out of the desktop version of the game. I could easily wrap up this entire review by simply saying this is the most addictive game you’ll probably ever play, but I guess I’ll sell it just a bit before I do.

So what do you do in the game? Well, you start off as a super tiny organism. Like life, you have to eat other things in order to grow and get bigger, so you do. First you’ll pick up these seemingly “lifeless” organisms that are littered all over the graph paper backdrop, but you’ve probably noticed a few larger--sometimes much larger--organisms swimming around. These are other players, and just like you, they have to eat to. The difference is that until you’re they’re size, you become the food.

Players can only eat other players if they’re a percentage larger than what they’re trying to eat. I think it’s usually around 25% larger, so this makes you immune to eating and being eaten by like-sized players. Also, the larger you get, the slower you move. So chasing down prey becomes much more difficult.

Be warned; however, if you become the largest fish in the sea, you’re not invincible. There are barbed bushes that players can shoot pieces of themselves into, and if they fill up these bushes enough, they’ll explode. If you get hit by the explosion then you’ll break up into smaller parts that can then be consumed by other players.

There is a beautiful sense of balance to the game, and while the premise is simple, gameplay mechanics are rich. Much of the game forces you to play mind games with other players. Chasing them down usually doesn’t work, you’ll need to out think them, too.

Just do me a favor and give Agar.io a shot. The gameplay is ludicrously good, and I almost wet my pants the first time I saw it pop up in the Play Store.